Behind the walls of Joliet Penitentiary, the search for escape did not always mean files, tunnels, or midnight breaks across the prison yard. Sometimes it came in a bottle, brewed in secret from whatever materials desperate men could get their hands on.
In December 1916, that search turned deadly.
According to Warden Michael Zimmerman, a group of convicts at the Illinois prison had been drinking what they believed was grain alcohol. It was not…